Who are the members of the international club?

Abstract

This article proposes pragmatic methods that incorporate recent contributions to public good theory to identify the members of the international club and how they select new members. This article also suggests simple applications to the recent problems in international clubs such as the euro and NATO.

Keywords:

• aggregate replacement function
• club members
• forming a club
• mathematical algorithm

JEL Classification:

• H41
• F13
• D10

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the referee for useful and helpful comments. An early version of this article was presented in seminars at the Helsinki School of Economics (2008), the Japanese Economic Association Spring Meeting (2010), the Japan Society of International Economics Spring Meeting (2011) and the Applied Regional Science Conference (2012). We are very grateful to Takumi Naito, Akira Okada, Kenzo Abe, Juuso Välimäki, Pekka Ilmakunnas, Pertti Haaparanta, Matti Pohjola, Charles Horioka and Tatsuhito Kono for their helpful comments.

Funding

The research of the first author was supported by Grant-in-Aid 23530367 from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology of Japan, the 2007 Zengin Foundation and the 2007 Japan Economic Research Foundation.